The Road to Recovery

Well, here we are, Tuesday morning and a blog entry waiting to be written.  And not much to say.

I am getting better, I think now.  Much less pain, anyway.  I’m still shedding skin, a sign my kidneys are not all the way back on line, but I’m not being treated for renal failure anymore.  I’m frequently cold, but that was not uncommon before all this.  I’m sleeping well, and my dreams aren’t so weird.  I went outside to sit in the warm sun yesterday, the first time I’ve done that since this started.  Warm sun feels healing.

What’s more interesting is, I’ve started to take an interest in the people around me.  When you’re really sick, all you want is relief.  When you start to heal, you begin to take an interest in your fellow sufferers and our caretakers.  And we’re a bunch of really interesting people.  People with PTSD, people dying, people who swear loudly at one another, people who take a kindly interest in their neighbors.  There’s a man-mountain with enough hair to give a grizzly a second winter coat, there’s a thin woman who must have a glass of chopped ice in one hand all the time.  There’s a man who, he confesses sadly, could have been a really good novelist if only he could spell and understand basic English grammar.  The staff, by and large underpaid and foreign, are amazingly kind and patient.  One in particular, a tall, very thin African named Ishmael, brings me little treats every afternoon.  I don’t know if it’s part of his training and required of him, but he does it with such a sweet smile, I can’t help but look forward to his appearance in my room.  The physical therapy staff are pushy and insistent and that’s to the good – otherwise, I’d lie curled up in bed sleeping the day away.  The knee is slowly, slowly stretching out and the rule is, push until it’s uncomfortable, not until it hurts.  My favorite is named Vicki and she calls me “Sunshine” in a very sarcastic tone.  So stretch, stretch . . . stretch.  I’m starting to stitch again, and have opened the file in which lurks the opening scenes of Tying the Knot.  Maybe someday, this will be behind me.

Meanwhile, here comes the “golden ball,” a base-ball-size plastic container of a powerful antibiotic on a thin cord to be fed into the “picc” that lives in a vein in my right upper arm.  Sometimes it makes me sick, so I’ll go lie down for awhile to see how it fares today.  Later I’m going out to buy flowers to plant on the balcony of my apartment in anticipation of my going home later this month.  Which I hope to do.